Wednesday, November 29, 2006

This Week in the NFL: Is It Thursday Yet?

"Is It Monday Yet?" is probably the best (if most ubiquitous) sports-ish ad campaign of the year. (Any other nominees for sports-ish ad campaign of the year? "Man Law?" "Mac vs. PC?" Madden '07? Put them in the comments.)

But "IIMY?" has created the "Is It [Blank] Yet?" phenomenon: Throwing the catchphrase out there for any day of the week where you can make a case.

And I'd say that "Is It Thursday Yet?" has jumped to the forefront of fan consciousness. Last week's Thursday NFL games didn't seem as novel as this week's; you expect Thursday games during Thanksgiving week.

But the game tomorrow night (Ravens at Bengals) is sitting right out there, enlivening an otherwise fairly slow week in sports (CFB coaches firings, MLB hot stove). Except for this one, terrifically important factor:

Because of the Thursday game, your fantasy football lineup has to be finalized by tomorrow mid-day at the latest (and I would imagine that most of you have your lineups finished by end of business today).

There's a cognitive break there: After a season of not having to really make the hard FFL choices until Friday (if you do your FFL at work) or Saturday (if you do your FFL at home), all of a sudden you've got to set your roster by midweek.

Does this "TNF" phenomenon make an otherwise "hump day" Wednesday any less... um... humpy?

You know what? Actually, it does. Thursday Night Football has done what Monday, by definition, can't: By starting the next football week three days early, it has broken up the "real-life" week.

Is It Thursday Yet?

(By the way: It's a pretty damn good game, too: The AFC's surprise team of the year -- Baltimore -- against the team everyone thought was due for a breakout year, but instead is in a near-must-win to make the playoffs -- Cincinnati. Too bad I live in NYC and won't be able to see the game on my cable network. Pick: Bengals.)

In my league, you can set your players based on when they play. So if you have no players from Baltimore or Cinci, it doesn't affect you at all. And if you do, you only have to set those positions in which you have players from those teams.

I'm a Steelers fan, so I'm rooting for a tie, followed by a massive steroids bust that forces the NFL to strip the Bungles and Ratbirds of all of their wins this year. That would put us back in the division lead.

In reality, the Ravens are just too good for the Bengals along both lines - at home or a neutral site, anyway. You can't ever discount a home team playing a divisional game.

That being said, I'll take the Ravens by 2 TDs. BUT... if Chris Henry catches a TD pass in the first half, I'll change my pick to the Bengals by 7. If they can stretch the field vertically and give Johnson & Johnson some running lanes, it could be enough to win.

Yes, the games are showing in the local markets - no need to buy and set up a dish in a day and a half.

I'm with ma4tt - a mass disqualification would be the only way our Steelers could get back into this thing. I wasn't convinced that the Ravens were for real until their beatdown against Pittsburgh. But Ocho Cinqo looks like he's back in the swing of things...

Thank God for the NFL.com stat tracker, which my friends and I lovingly dumbed "Helmet", in honor of the little helemt that shows where the current line of scrimmage is. This way when Packers-Vikings happens in a few weeks, I can at least know what the score is (and Hell, the NFL might be doing me a favor by sparing me the visuals).

I say they should be the baltimore laudenum addicks (K is on purpose) but that is a bit too generic and could refer to any number of writers from the romantic and victorian periods. I used to have direct tv and the nfl ticket bhut when I moved into my new apartment I found out that we cant use our dish because of the trees in our complex. Dan since you have mentioned your knowledge of business what do you think is the likelihood of the nfl caving in to the cable companies and is it possible for the government to force them to allow everyone access to their games? I am not going to pretend to know much about the working of big business but I thought monopolies were not allowed anymore and isn't direct tv's hold on the nfl package a monopoly?

1. Corona sucks2. I have NFL network in High Def! Thank you Rhode Island!3. Ravens win a squeaker, late field goal after Cincy just scored with under 3 minutes left to play, but got a 15 yard penalty from Chad Johnson because he did a Peter Griffin-esque dance "My Sha-boopie"4. Thank God for DVR so I won't miss, Earl, Office, Scrubs, 30 Rock to watch football!5. I'm not quite sure why I decided to number my thoughts

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.